Again
by Ithilwen K-Bane
Summary: How does Singe see Lucian? A man can grow old in his own country and still feel young. Challenge response.


I do not own _Underworld_. For that we must thank Len Wiseman, Kevin Grevioux, Danny McBride and all the other techs and artists who brought the movies to shape. This was written in response to Veep's Open Sketch Night challenge on Bloodfeud, "Why does Singe wear glasses?" I've been debating whether or not to post it.

I've wanted to do this one for some time.

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For a while, there had been young Reed, who'd been only forty-one when he'd died of something that they'd learned to call a silver grenade, but from '46 through the coming of young Pinkhas in '61, he had been the youngest one.

And hadn't _that_ been a counterintuitive experience.

They'd all thought it had been a new thing, afterward. But it turned out that it had happened before, to the Armenians. And before that to other peoples. It had happened since. It had happened by the Nile and the Mississippi and the Sahara, in ancient and modern times. It had happened in the fifteenth century, after a slave revolt.

He'd grown old in his own country, made his compromises and acted like a sensible man, sewing his clothes just so. And then, like so many other sensible men, he'd stepped on his own two feet, fastened a tag on his suitcase and boarded the train.

He'd grown old in his own country but in those places, time had been condensed and frozen into something caustic: flesh had melted from his bones like tallow until his fingers stretched like spiders to hinges and then bullets. Years passed, years that seemed longer than any time before. Later, in the tunnels below Budapest, he would count up the nights and days since, waiting for them to add up to more . (He was still waiting when Viktor ended his count with a fist.) From time to time there would be a great noise, like the storm of God overhead, but the end had never come.

Not for him, at least.

With the single star approaching from the east, they'd made them walk. He was very old by then, old and dead and long buried, only a skeleton shambling through the snow. People fell and were shot. People fell and were left alone.

Or found, by a young man who was really so much older.

Looking back, he'd wondered at the bite. He'd been a doctor once, knowing all about infection and resistance. In the years since, he'd learned even more. The chances of a healthy human surviving the change were slim enough, but he had grown old in his own country and shrunk older in the time since. Still, the virus did its work like the flame of God inside his skin, and the end had never come.

Three years of cold and starving had worn his flesh to lean carrion too spare for even wolves to eat, but the deadliest fever on the planet barely left him singed.

Oh, he'd been useful since, but the young man couldn't have known that at the time. He'd used his skills to further a plan -- so very far from sensible -- meant to prevent a final ending. The change had made him young again. When the strength returned to his fingers, he'd treated injuries by touch. When the muscles grew in, lean as old leather along his legs, he'd stood and walked like a new-toddling child, all the while attended by young men who were really so much older. They'd found him glasses to replace the pair he'd left behind to shuffle blindly into the snow. (The virus only turned things back so far. Still, he was grateful.)

He'd been a good find, a rare find, an educated man with a disciplined mind, but the young man couldn't have known that. They'd been on the run with no supplies and had no reason not to leave him lay.

But Lucian had once worn a number on his skin.

In time he'd run, fought, bled, killed, trusted, been worthy of trust. He'd turned other men and seen them turned and he'd never doubted that a lycan was not a monster.

They were really so much older, but they weren't always wise. Only a few of them could claim that, the few who'd seen the camps or the fires or the long march or the silver-studded whip. A man who'd never known those things, a man grown old in his own country, could still feel so very young.

And Singe lived, and the world promised never again, night after empty night.

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_"Who today remembers the massacre of the Armenians?" -- Hitler, 1939_

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What is happening in Darfur has happened before. There are lots of places to go if you want to do something. MercyCorps dot org is one.


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